So I had this long post typed out over my parsing against other SAMs with Onimaru vs Soboro, how I always barely outdmged them, but when I parsed it against myself, I always did less damage w/ Soboro than Onimaru, and I was so confused at which was the better GKT.

Then before I hit post, friend logged on for our weekly ENM that we just started, and Hagun dropped, friend let me have this one, so now I don't care!!

I was so happy, I wanted to share.

Thanks Alla Sams, since I constantly read these boards even though everybody else hates you guys. I don't. Not yet.

I've always done better with soboro than onimaru in merits, but that's due to how quickly you can spam WSs when you hit 100% TP. Going an attack round over negates the bonus soboro gives you (with Sekkanoki you can save yourself once every 5 minutes from this though). Full overwhelm merits and pushing to always trigger it will tip the scales in favor of Soboro.

Also /DRG with the large chunks of TP from Jumps you will get from using Soboro will tip it that way.

You can't really compare yourself against yourself in parses unless everything else is held equal (same party members playing exactly the same, you play exactly the same). You could compare things like average WS damage and average damage per hit, but that isn't going to answer which is better for you overall.

So, just to make sure, Soboro > Onimaru if you're playing aggressively enough?

My merit party made fun of me for using Soboro and not having very strong ws or acc (I just dinged 75 last night actually! ;_;). Other then Hagun, I told him I'd parse better with a Soboro instead of Onimaru (SAM/WAR, working on /drg after a few key merits). He didn't like that comment much =P. Disbanded a couple mobs later, called me gimp, and told me never to invite him again. Soooooo...yeah.

Any ways, just askin. Thanks.

Edited, Jun 9th 2009 8:25pm by Salodin

____________________________

Bsphil wrote:

Rana does his own sh*t. He's edgy and 3-hitty. He'll walk up to merit mobs and go, so what I don't have an attack bonus, I'm @#%^ing rana. I'm a black hole of awesome, absorbing all dimensions of win from all around me. That's right I @#%^ing open darkness for your gekko. Without me you'd be a @#%^ing nobody. You'd be blowing PUPs for party invites. Rana is the alpha and the omega, if by alpha and omega, you mean the first and third hits of rana.

Thanks. I knew this, but just needed some justification from some one else who doesn't have their head so far up their behind to even consider the idea that a level 50 weapon could outparse a lvl 73 weapon.

____________________________

Bsphil wrote:

Rana does his own sh*t. He's edgy and 3-hitty. He'll walk up to merit mobs and go, so what I don't have an attack bonus, I'm @#%^ing rana. I'm a black hole of awesome, absorbing all dimensions of win from all around me. That's right I @#%^ing open darkness for your gekko. Without me you'd be a @#%^ing nobody. You'd be blowing PUPs for party invites. Rana is the alpha and the omega, if by alpha and omega, you mean the first and third hits of rana.

Thanks. I knew this, but just needed some justification from some one else who doesn't have their head so far up their behind to even consider the idea that a level 50 weapon could outparse a lvl 73 weapon.

Most of the people are seeing "his hits are for less... his WSes are for less... his weapon must suck" without bothering to take into account hits per unit time (more of them) or WSes per unit time (more of them).

#9figster,
Posted:Jun 22 2009 at 3:24 PM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) this is a huge debate in my ls. hagun vs soboro vs onimaru. hagun is #1 top damaging weapon for sam, bar none. onimaru is the best til you get hagun. and soboro should only be used til 60, then it doesnt do high enough dmg ws's and feeds the mob tp, and the dmg rating is too low and doesnt cause enough dmg. personally, im all for soboro. but my ls mates are totally against it. thoughts?

this is a huge debate in my ls. hagun vs soboro vs onimaru. hagun is #1 top damaging weapon for sam, bar none. onimaru is the best til you get hagun. and soboro should only be used til 60, then it doesnt do high enough dmg ws's and feeds the mob tp, and the dmg rating is too low and doesnt cause enough dmg.

I mean we spout all the math we want, but I did a few parses and was dissapointed. Onimaru whooped my Soboro's ***...by a lot.

I started off with polearm (on birds), but switched to soboro cause of my lack of merits in everything. After about 45min of parsing I went /cry because I had fallen behind after restarting the parser for my new weapon.

Discouraged, I swapped to Onimaru, and restarted the parse. Lo and Behold, I blew past everyone. What was a 1-2% lead on them when using polearm jumped to 7-9%. I was astonished. I was Sam/War at the time.

So yeah, onimaru vs soboro...wtf?

____________________________

Bsphil wrote:

Rana does his own sh*t. He's edgy and 3-hitty. He'll walk up to merit mobs and go, so what I don't have an attack bonus, I'm @#%^ing rana. I'm a black hole of awesome, absorbing all dimensions of win from all around me. That's right I @#%^ing open darkness for your gekko. Without me you'd be a @#%^ing nobody. You'd be blowing PUPs for party invites. Rana is the alpha and the omega, if by alpha and omega, you mean the first and third hits of rana.

All I'm saying is, my Onimaru did more damage then my polearm (while eatting crab sushi), and soboro (ate meat while using both katanas). And at the end of the day, that's pretty important.

With more gear/merits, I'm sure my polearm would outdo my katana on birds, but till then, all I'm saying is my Onimaru outdid my polearm and my soboro. I don't pretend to know why, I just know what I see when I look at the parser.

You say competitive parses don't mean anything, and I can see why, so next time I go out I'll simply compare one great katana for x amount of birds, then the other katana for x amount of birds. Compare total damage, etc etc, and see what I get.

____________________________

Bsphil wrote:

Rana does his own sh*t. He's edgy and 3-hitty. He'll walk up to merit mobs and go, so what I don't have an attack bonus, I'm @#%^ing rana. I'm a black hole of awesome, absorbing all dimensions of win from all around me. That's right I @#%^ing open darkness for your gekko. Without me you'd be a @#%^ing nobody. You'd be blowing PUPs for party invites. Rana is the alpha and the omega, if by alpha and omega, you mean the first and third hits of rana.

Just to make sure you know what you're talking about: You're claiming a weapon with similar/higher DoT, 5-hit WS, lower hit build, and straight up +25% dmg lost to a GK that used to cost 10k. The amount of suck that's required for Soboro or a decent polearm to loose to Onimaru boggles my mind. It had to have been poor parse control.

Edited, Jun 23rd 2009 12:19am by shintasama

____________________________

Quote:

I don't believe in good guys versus bad guys anymore… I only see a plethora of states acting in self interest… with varying ethics and moral standards of course, but self-interest nonetheless

Winston Churchill wrote:

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things

But as for you parsing higher with Oni than you did with Soboro, perhaps it's all due to your /WAR sub.

10% Double Attack does wonders for a slow but strong single-hit weapon.

With Soboro and it's multi-hit on the other hand, having Double Attack go off actually renders the multi-hit effect void (doesnt go off). Thus reducing damage done even more. This effect would be even more noticable with a Pole Grip or such forms of additional double attack gear.

It's not that either weapon is bad. I'm not saying one is better than the other either. But each one requires diffirent gear, stats and subjobs to increase it's power. You can't just ride the exact same gear and then wonder why your damage is suddenly lower when the used stats are not in the favor of your current weapon.

Though Polearm beat out Oni by a alot, Soboro was slightly below Oni. This was with /nin sub (which I did because all other sams were /nin and I wasn't safe with another sub)

But then the parse changed in soboros favor when one of the sams was repped for a war. The sam who left was a super geared usukane/blahblah sam though. So I don't know, parses can change from the slightest fluttering of a butterfly's wings.

I know that for anything small-group/nyzul/FoV sam with soboro is the tops in the fun category.

i hate using soboro because it's kind of a hate magnet, but that's just me. i'd use it over onimaru if i didn't have hagun.

i'd like to get a decent polearm and try that out, but my interest in the game is waning. i don't really log on enough. i'll probably try love halberd out at birds sometime soon if i can form a party i don't have to BRD for. (shrug)

i'd like to get a decent polearm and try that out, but my interest in the game is waning. i don't really log on enough. i'll probably try love halberd out at birds sometime soon if i can form a party i don't have to BRD for. (shrug)

Hey, do you happen to remember where that Love vs Tomoe/Gondo/Engetsuto math you did is?

I just got love and was curious how far behind it was, but don't want to redo it if I don't have to.

____________________________

Quote:

I don't believe in good guys versus bad guys anymore… I only see a plethora of states acting in self interest… with varying ethics and moral standards of course, but self-interest nonetheless

Winston Churchill wrote:

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things

The answers have already been said. But you should definitely go back and re-visit your PA build to see where you went wrong. Imo, a good PA build is dependant on buffs aswell, a COR doing Chaos/Hunters does wonders for PA. Penta'a build is obviously a completely different one to YGK.

The fact that Onimaru beat Soboro /WAR isn't suprising. Onimaru is a solid /WAR weapon. It was only 10K for so long, because it took the population how many years to realise its way better than the KS99 dropping OMGSTR+5 Shinsoku? It has the best DoT outside off Soboro, and the second highest dmg-ing ws's outside of Hagun - its the inbetweener!

i'd like to get a decent polearm and try that out, but my interest in the game is waning. i don't really log on enough. i'll probably try love halberd out at birds sometime soon if i can form a party i don't have to BRD for. (shrug)

Hey, do you happen to remember where that Love vs Tomoe/Gondo/Engetsuto math you did is?

I just got love and was curious how far behind it was, but don't want to redo it if I don't have to.

i'd like to get a decent polearm and try that out, but my interest in the game is waning. i don't really log on enough. i'll probably try love halberd out at birds sometime soon if i can form a party i don't have to BRD for. (shrug)

Hey, do you happen to remember where that Love vs Tomoe/Gondo/Engetsuto math you did is?

I just got love and was curious how far behind it was, but don't want to redo it if I don't have to.

hmmm, I have higher fSTR by 2, Love's DA rate is 55% according to wiki, and meditate is super overvalued in the encyclopedia math. I'm going to need to work it out myself ~_~ Thanks for linking though.

Edited, Jun 23rd 2009 5:32pm by shintasama

____________________________

Quote:

I don't believe in good guys versus bad guys anymore… I only see a plethora of states acting in self interest… with varying ethics and moral standards of course, but self-interest nonetheless

Winston Churchill wrote:

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things

Nope, paid a pretty penny for Engetsuo (since Tomoe is a friggin ***** and won't drop).

Quote:

You're claiming a weapon with similar/higher DoT, 5-hit WS, lower hit build, and straight up +25% dmg lost to a GK

I'm not claiming, I proved it in a parse. Of course I didn't save such parse, so I'm stopping now before some one says "parse or it didn't happen". I do understand that gear/sub/merits/secondcomingofjesus all factors into polearm being better (a lot of which I just don't have right now) but when so many people make such sweeping statements like "Polearms on birds or gtfo", you'd think the difference would be clearly noticeable regardless of gear/sub/merits/secondcomingofjesus.

I only have max stp and 3/8 great katana merits right now. I'm sure that factors into it.

When using polearm, I swap my build from bushi/fowling (if using soboro) or bushi/brutal (if using onimaru) over to brutal/fowling (for polearm). I swap my dusk hands (for great katana) over to Noritsune kote (for polearm) since my acc is horrendous. My avg weapon skill is horrible, even though I know I'm landing all 5 hits (count tp every ws). Even though I do occasionally miss a hit or two on ws, even when all 5 connect (which is more often then not), the damage still isn't anything to brag about. In fact, if I recall correctly, my Onimaru's avg ws was the same or higher in damage then my pentas, and again, I know that's a gear thing. I'm eatting crab sushi with one bard as the buffer, and I'm going wtf...those alla people effin lied to me!

I don't even really care too much about all the particulars. However, I do find it pretty effin irritating when you read these forums constantly in order to try and max what I can do with my sam, only to see that the thing everybody goes on about (polearm on birds) isn't always the best thing to use if you don't have very specific things to make it work.

I swear, each and every one of you needs a **** disclaimer on every post you make saying "So and So is better, if you have this sub with this gear with these buffs with these merits". I still have more parsing to do to verify, but as of right now, with my /war (which is the only real DD sub available to me aside from /nin), Onimaru did more damage then Polearm and Soboro.

Clearly, the blanket statement isn't working for me. Working on it, honest to god, but right now I need to be using great kanata, and as the title of this thread points out, it's between Onimaru and Soboro. More parsing needs to be done on my end of course, and trust me, it'll be done. I'm over the 'theory craft' or whatever it's called, I'm doing the parses and checking my numbers for this.

I don't know what else to tell you. I'll post back eventually when I get to merit again, which should be soon since I have off tomorrow. Till then, by all means talk to me some more about this topic. In fact, if I find a second, I'll edit this to include my sam gear which I'll add on ffxiah.com.

EDIT: Ok, here is my tp set when using Onimaru. My soboro set is exactly the same, only I swap the earrings as I detailed above, and I switch grip to a Mythril grip +1. Linky

And here is my ws set. This is for G. Katana only. Just borrowed friends KO, so now I'll have to redo my polearm ws set in order to maintain my 5-hit. Linky

Edited, Jun 23rd 2009 8:23pm by Salodin

____________________________

Bsphil wrote:

Rana does his own sh*t. He's edgy and 3-hitty. He'll walk up to merit mobs and go, so what I don't have an attack bonus, I'm @#%^ing rana. I'm a black hole of awesome, absorbing all dimensions of win from all around me. That's right I @#%^ing open darkness for your gekko. Without me you'd be a @#%^ing nobody. You'd be blowing PUPs for party invites. Rana is the alpha and the omega, if by alpha and omega, you mean the first and third hits of rana.

I don't even really care too much about all the particulars. However, I do find it pretty effin irritating when you read these forums constantly in order to try and max what I can do with my sam, only to see that the thing everybody goes on about (polearm on birds) isn't always the best thing to use if you don't have very specific things to make it work.

I bring this up almost every polearm discussion we have:

Shinta wrote:

if you don't have the build for it polearm's performance drops off quickly

Shinta wrote:

I know polearm has excellent potential in that camp, I'm saying 99.9% of people @#%^ it up by: 1) not having polearm merits (I personally don't have the extra points, so I don't even bother with polearm), 2) not eating the right food, 3) not having half the gear you've mentioned, 4)not having 2 bards at their beck and call (it's just easier for me to find COR), and 5) getting pwnt by feather tickle. It's not the sort of thing were you can just equip a polearm when you hit 75 and do anything close to decent dmg like people seem to think, while GK is much easier to work with, doesn't require nearly as much support, and isn't limited to piercing weak mobs.

You seem to have at least the food and BRD down though, so there has to be some major problems with your gear setup.

Quote:

I swear, each and every one of you needs a **** disclaimer on every post you make saying "So and So is better, if you have this sub with this gear with these buffs with these merits".

Believe it or not, we don't have the time to write/figure out every single possible combination of gear and merits affect on everything. All theorycrafts are done with a certain competency/gear/merit combination in mind (usually the posters), you should already have the common sense to realize everything doesn't necessarily apply to you. If you really want to see how it should work in your situation, learn the math and do it yourself.

As far as soboro vs onimaru goes though, with any reasonable build SAM/WAR Onimaru should do ~15-21% better melee but soboro should do ~27% more ws dmg if you're paying attention (Soboro WS should be ~75% as strong, but ~1.7x more abundant, soboro should win by ~3-10% overall, if you were /DRG like I've suggested the margin would be much greater). For Onimaru to beat soboro: 1)You aren't on top of WS, 2)your WS build is horrible, 3)your acc is horrible, 4) your STR is extremely low, and/or most likely: you/the players you're parsing against are not consistent. You could parse the same party with the same weapons/gear 10 times and get more variance than that. Competitive parsing just doesn't work worth a ****.

Edited, Jun 23rd 2009 8:29pm by shintasama

Edited, Jun 23rd 2009 8:32pm by shintasama

____________________________

Quote:

I don't believe in good guys versus bad guys anymore… I only see a plethora of states acting in self interest… with varying ethics and moral standards of course, but self-interest nonetheless

Winston Churchill wrote:

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things

Well I really wish when people bring polearm up in a new thread, they say everything you just quoted shinta, cause I don't see that in this thread. And of the many threads I glance over, I have yet to see what you quoted there.

In fact, as shown in my link a few posts above, many people simply say "Polearm or GTFO". That is my issue. However, I do give you kudos for at least taking the time to point that out to me. So for that, thanks. Just next time, if this thing ever happens again, don't jump the gun and say:

Quote:

You're claiming a weapon with similar/higher DoT, 5-hit WS, lower hit build, and straight up +25% dmg lost to a GK

followed by quoting yourself in another thread with:

Quote:

I know polearm has excellent potential in that camp, I'm saying 99.9% of people @#%^ it up by: 1) not having polearm merits (I personally don't have the extra points, so I don't even bother with polearm), 2) not eating the right food, 3) not having half the gear you've mentioned, 4)not having 2 bards at their beck and call (it's just easier for me to find COR), and 5) getting pwnt by feather tickle. It's not the sort of thing were you can just equip a polearm when you hit 75 and do anything close to decent dmg like people seem to think, while GK is much easier to work with, doesn't require nearly as much support, and isn't limited to piercing weak mobs.

Seriously... come on now. I know you followed up by saying it takes certain gear/merits, but you never allude to that prior to your previous post. You simply move forward by joking (I think...) that I'm using some lolpolearm, in stead of what is the most probable thing in that I just don't have the right gear/merits.

Of course, I don't expect every one to tailer each gear suggestion to each person/gear set, but by just saying "this only works in certain gear/merit situations", you at least give out the notion that maybe what is being suggested isn't the best thing for certain people.

The person in the other thread who said "Just eat crab sushi and you'll still do better" needs to get bonked in the head.

Quote:

Competitive parsing just doesn't work worth a ****.

And that's perfectly fine, but parsing doesn't just show competitive damage. I don't have to look at that little column that says "Total Damage (%)" to help me choose which weapon to use.

As far as why my soboro isn't performing up to par, I'm not quite sure. I just posted my tp and ws gear, so please comment. The only thing I can think of is that I sometimes have issues WSing at 100% because of the mob dying at untimely times, or me sitting at 5/6 hits, followed by a triple attack putting me at 8/6 hits. Can't tell you HOW many **** times that's happened to me -_-.

Edited, Jun 23rd 2009 8:46pm by Salodin

____________________________

Bsphil wrote:

Rana does his own sh*t. He's edgy and 3-hitty. He'll walk up to merit mobs and go, so what I don't have an attack bonus, I'm @#%^ing rana. I'm a black hole of awesome, absorbing all dimensions of win from all around me. That's right I @#%^ing open darkness for your gekko. Without me you'd be a @#%^ing nobody. You'd be blowing PUPs for party invites. Rana is the alpha and the omega, if by alpha and omega, you mean the first and third hits of rana.

As for your TP gear, they are decent for new SAM75. I personally left soboro for Hagun before I transferred to Polearm user in bird.

As far as my analysis of my own parse, my friend's Ushikirimaru do twice as much damage as my Soboro, while my soboro swing is still less than twice as much as his. Hence, less overall damage from me. Though there's tons of other difference like He got Byakko's, I didn't have one.

I guess my point is, if you have a hefty amount of STR in your TPing set, you can see the edge of soboro winning the parse. Otherwise, other GKT like Hagun can pull further.

Now to polearm, you need to post your WS gear. I still don't believe you can't perform better with Polearm. I had shi[b][/b]tty 65% accuracy with polearm in one party, but I still can pull 1k+ on my penta thrust and parse considerably higher than any non-polearm DD.

Seriously... come on now. I know you followed up by saying it takes certain gear/merits, but you never allude to that prior to your previous post. You simply move forward by joking (I think...) that I'm using some lolpolearm, in stead of what is the most probable thing in that I just don't have the right gear/merits.

Engetsuto won't do amazing w/o proper gear/support, but it should still outdo Onimaru, esp with proper food.

Quote:

or me sitting at 5/6 hits, followed by a triple attack putting me at 8/6 hits. Can't tell you HOW many **** times that's happened to me -_-.

That's why it's ~1.7x more WS instead of ~1.917x lol

Quote:

I just posted my tp and ws gear, so please comment.

(I know you don't have everything here, but here are suggestions of major things to work towards to maximize dmg, as I stated above, the worse off things like acc/atk/STR/WSfreq are the more onimaru stands out)

I guess my point is, if you have a hefty amount of STR in your TPing set, you can see the edge of soboro winning the parse. Otherwise, other GKT like Hagun can pull further.

I should probably comment on this too. I tp in 114 STR, the fSTR cap for colibri being 111 (12fSTR). For every 4 STR you are under 111STR you loose 1 fSTR vs colibri. Since Soboro has such low base dmg and multi-hits, it feels the impact of high/low STR much more than other weapons

side note: I know it feels like we're withholding information from you, but really it's just impossible for us to bring up every nuance and detail that affects weapon performance without spending days writing each post.

Edited, Jun 23rd 2009 10:07pm by shintasama

____________________________

Quote:

I don't believe in good guys versus bad guys anymore… I only see a plethora of states acting in self interest… with varying ethics and moral standards of course, but self-interest nonetheless

Winston Churchill wrote:

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things

How? >_< I don't count even over 100. It seems you're elvaan (from your satchel), so sam/drg would have 74 str. add in the str from your tp set (if you aren't in an assault area), and you have 91str.

Eat a kabob, and thats 96str.

____________________________

Bsphil wrote:

Rana does his own sh*t. He's edgy and 3-hitty. He'll walk up to merit mobs and go, so what I don't have an attack bonus, I'm @#%^ing rana. I'm a black hole of awesome, absorbing all dimensions of win from all around me. That's right I @#%^ing open darkness for your gekko. Without me you'd be a @#%^ing nobody. You'd be blowing PUPs for party invites. Rana is the alpha and the omega, if by alpha and omega, you mean the first and third hits of rana.

Rana does his own sh*t. He's edgy and 3-hitty. He'll walk up to merit mobs and go, so what I don't have an attack bonus, I'm @#%^ing rana. I'm a black hole of awesome, absorbing all dimensions of win from all around me. That's right I @#%^ing open darkness for your gekko. Without me you'd be a @#%^ing nobody. You'd be blowing PUPs for party invites. Rana is the alpha and the omega, if by alpha and omega, you mean the first and third hits of rana.

Still a fair amount of STR to be tp-ing in, I guess thats the benefit of being Elvaan - Having STR that high is obviously a very important role in Soboro's performance in comparison to all ofther SAM weapons.